Rapper Iggy Azalea’s arrival on OnlyFans – best known for its sexual content – has stirred a debate about earnings, equality, and the site’s shaky relationship with the sex workers who use it to make a living, writes
dangles a cherry over her tongue. She rolls across a bed in a motel room bathed in sex-dungeon lighting. A vintage camcorder captures her every move. “Surprise!” the Australian rapper declares, as she announces a collaboration with adults-only subscription site, . “I’m dropping a mixed media project called Hotter Than Hell!” Azalea, best known for hits including “Fancy” and “Change Your Life”, promises photographs, videos, merch and “hot as hell things”. She leans further into the optics of joining OnlyFans, a platform best known for its use by , by teasing “scandalous s***” in the works: “My art slut era has arrived.”
OnlyFans is a self-described “subscription social network” where users pay a direct fee to performers, influencers and “creators” to get access to videos and photos. Launched by British entrepreneur Tim Stokely in 2016 with the intention of promoting content made by all types of people – fitness instructors, artists or musicians – it quickly became synonymous with sex work. This was, after all, a rare digital platform in which adult entertainers could sell, share and produce explicit content on their own terms, and pocket the majority of the profits; OnlyFans itself takes just 20 per cent. By 2019, The New York Times had dubbed the platform the “” and, thanks to its loose content policy, the name OnlyFans rapidly became shorthand for homemade adult material.
Despite the site’s seemingly unbreakable bond with the sex work community, OnlyFans pledged in October 2021 to ban sexually explicit content – effectively halting the livelihoods of many creators. The move was swiftly reversed, following a barrage of criticism. At the time, Stokely gave an interview blaming the short-lived decision on banks refusing to work with the platform (claiming they worried about “reputational risk”). He assured users, though, that his site had struck a deal that would allow normal service to resume.
She was, for the most part, correct. When Thorne joined OnlyFans, reported that she made $1m in one day. Shortly after, OnlyFans set a $50 limit on creator tips (down from $200) and extended the pending payout period from seven days to three weeks – meaning creators would potentially have to wait significantly longer to receive their money. While the company has said that the changes were unrelated to Thorne’s presence on the site – or the controversy it generated – sex workers and explicit content creators felt otherwise.
